Rosa Parks mourned at Capitol, Oct. 30, 2005

On this day in 2005, Rosa Parks, a civil rights pioneer, was mourned when her casket was placed in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol for two days of public viewing. Parks was the first woman and the second African-American to lie in state there. She was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a U.S. government official, and the second private person (after the French city planner Pierre L'Enfant) to be honored in this fashion.

Following her death in Detroit on Oct. 24 at the age of 92, Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery, Alabama, and taken to St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal church, where she lay in repose on Oct. 29. At a memorial service on the following morning, Condoleezza Rice said that, if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the secretary of state.

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Some historians view Dec. 1, 1955, as a turning point in the modern civil rights movement. That was the day Parks, a seamstress, declined to yield her seat to a white man and move to back of the bus in Montgomery. She was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance. Her act of civil disobedience galvanized a movement that sought an end to state-sponsored racial segregation.

“People have said over the years that the reason I did not give up my seat was because I was tired,” Parks said in reviewing the confrontation on the bus. However, she added, “I did not think of being physically tired. My feet were not hurting. I was tired in a different way.

“I was tired of seeing so many men treated as boys and not called by their proper names or titles. I was tired of seeing children and women mistreated and disrespected because of the color of their skin. I was tired of Jim Crow laws, of legally enforced racial segregation.”

A joint congressional resolution honoring Parks won bipartisan support. Many members of the House and Senate, as well as President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush, attended her memorial service in the Rotunda on Oct. 31.

Parks was raised at a time when few opportunities for advancement were available for black Americans, especially in the South. “Back then,” she once recalled, “we didn’t have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.”

Reminiscing toward the end of her life, Parks said, “I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace.”